New Play Space for the Heart

$3,561
of $3,000 goal

Play is AwesomePlay is incredibly important to the development of children’s social, emotional, cognitive and physical development, as well as creativity and imagination. Play is essential to brain development and the development of certain reasoning abilities. Additionally, a lack of free, spontaneous play can be harmful to a developing child.

Who BenefitsThis project will benefit children in our community, our neighbourhood (with 3 elementary schools), and children that travel to the Heart of Riverdale and Leaping Feats from Carcross to the Ibex Valley and beyond. It will benefit their families by providing a meeting place and a safe space for supervised play. This play space will serve as a community gathering place for families, an indoor option for childcare facilities to bring their kids, a destination play space for preschool programs, and for kids with special needs.

What will we do with the moneyWe will use these funds towards the purchase of a new indoor play space, as the current Heart of Riverdale "ball pit" is aging out (25 years in the space and purchased second hand by Frazers), with replacement parts unavailable and continuous fixes are taking a toll. Also the space is only suitable for ages 3 and up, we need a new place that is suitable for babies and toddlers.

Campaign closes on January 12, 2018We are applying for a Community Development Fund grant to purchase the new indoor play space for babies to 12 year olds, and this Campaign will serve as a portion of the Heart's required financial contribution.

The Heart is Growing As an arts based grass roots community centre, people use the space, similarly to the Canada Games Centre but with an emphasis on Arts Based Programming, such as our School of Music (rock, classical, jazz), Musical Theatre (including vaudeville), Visual Arts (craft making), All styles of dance (including breakdance), excellent Preschool Programming, and community events such as The Christmas Open House, Multicultural Festival, Breakdance Battles, and Theatrical Presentations (in our black box).

Kids at the Heart851 kids, under the age of 12, came through the Heart via programming in 2017. The "ball pit" has been a respite for all kids to get their wiggles out before attending programming where a focussed mind is important for learning new skills. Our drop in kids (average 22/night from after school to 10:00 pm) from accross Whitehorse come to the space to meet their friends(often from different schools) and climb through the space together and bond through imagination and physical play. A new play space, means another 30 years for local kids accross our city and beyond to have an affordable, supervised, option for physical play, friend making, community building, and fun.

We have finally opened the playspace and you can sign your waiver and start visiting During our drop in times - 3:00 - 6:45 Monday to Friday and 10:00 -1:00 on Saturdays. We will keep your membership on file and you only have to sign the waiver once.

Let me know if you have any questions at theheartofriverdale@gmail.com.

Hi All - I am super duper happy to announce that the Heart of Riverdale has been awarded funding from the Yukon's Community Development Fund for 86,500. We should have the new play space completed by the end of June, 2018 :)

We have surpassed our goal - and will keep the campaign open just to see - The grant has gone in, so now we keep our fingers crossed :) Thank you all for you generous help - all names are on file to process memberships Starting this June.